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GARDONE RIVIERA, Italy, July 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When I was about nine, the thing I wanted more than anything else was to be swept away to a magical, heroic adventure in Narnia. My mother had given me C.S. Lewis’s books to read, and like so many other children, I became enamored of, almost obsessed, with the stories and the noble worldview they presented. If only I could live a life like that; of adventure and the pursuit of The Good, the fight against evil and oppression.

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I know that scholars have examined the books and all their literary allusions, religious allegories, and historical implications, and in those papers, the character of Reepicheep – the fearless, gallant mouse, twirling his whiskers like a mustache, little paw resting on the hilt of his tiny rapier – has always been held up as Lewis’s icon of the ideal Christian knight.

Reepicheep, and his little band of miniscule followers, can present to a child someone with whom he can identify and whom he can emulate. Weak and small himself, Reepicheep defends the weak and small; aware of his flaws of pride, he befriends the flawed Eustace who repents of pride. Reepicheep’s strength is not in his arm but in the steadfastness of his faith. He never hesitates because he is, literally, fearless. His faith in Aslan has completely “cast out fear.”

Our managing director, Steve Jalsevac, likes to say that LifeSiteNews.com “has a punch well beyond our weight,”  that our influence far outreaches our size and limited resources. And this is true. I am told all the time that our articles are read, quoted and republished everywhere. But I have started to compare us not to a prizefighter, but to the valiant little mice of Reepicheep’s clan.

At Narnia’s darkest hour, the tiny mice, with little swords too small to do much damage, do not hesitate for an instant, don’t waste a moment considering the hopeless odds, or their relative size in the fight against Miraz’s Telmarines. They simply dive in to the fray, bringing down hardened soldiers ten times their size. By themselves, the mice could have done nothing to defeat the evil Miraz, but without them, their bravery and the sting of their needle-like swords, the Narnian army would have likely faced swift defeat. (Well, the trees helped too, I suppose).

This is how I have been thinking of LifeSite lately. With a staff of 15 or so, scattered around the world in 4 countries and two continents, mostly working from home, communicating by Skype and email, depending almost entirely on the individual donations of our readers, LifeSiteNews.com keeps stinging the toes of our giant opponents, throwing them off guard, keeping them hopping-mad, furious that we are too small to kill and too painful to ignore.

The rapier we carry is made of the truth, the needle-sharp facts behind the population control and abortion slogans that the mainstream media and the political class want to conceal.

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We may not be able to defeat our opponents with truth alone, but we make it more possible for the whole pro-life community to win. Every time I hear our detractors – and we have a lot of them – try to diminish our work (calling us merely a ‘blog’  is one of the latest favorites) I think of Reepicheep, the hero of the Second Battle of Beruna, the friend of Aslan.

As a devotee of the books, there wasn’t much about the Prince Caspian movie I liked, but I thought this scene captured a bit of Reepicheep’s flair:

I have spent the last week or so in a small town in northern Italy attending a conference on the social teachings of the Catholic Church and their political, legal, and economic implications and I’ve occasionally felt a little out of my depth – just a wee bit intimidated. Founded by no less a person than Dietrich Von Hildebrand, the Roman Forum’s speakers are all people with multiple PhDs, ‘summa cum laude’  from Ivy League universities and places like Oxford.

The attendees come from eight countries, teach law and economics, speak several languages and have published books and papers, organized conferences and been in the thick of the fight to save the world, in some cases since before I was born.

In truth, while I have learned a great deal and will certainly come away with a broader and more complete understanding of the battles we fight, I have felt a bit outclassed. Among such intellectual heavy-weight fighters, my little sword seems as small and ineffective as Reepicheep’s rapier.

But one by one, each of the illustrious people I have talked to has told me how vital, how indispensable our work is at LifeSiteNews.com. Very few people can come to an international academic symposium. But the whole world needs to know what these people know and are saying and none of these Catholic intellectual heavy-weights are able to do that.

There are times when I simply cannot believe how fortunate I am to be doing this, and I am nearly floored by how much respect and admiration our work receives. Today, I think I had one of the nicest compliments so far. A man who has spent 20 years or more working in the mainstream media, who covered the attacks on the Trade Towers in 2001, who made documentaries for A&E and was director of programming for EWTN, told me that LifeSiteNews.com is one of the best news services out there, “absolutely without comparison.”

“No one else is doing what you do. Without you guys, there would be an un-fillable gap.”

This summer, will you help us continue to fill this vital gap?
Help us reach our goal.

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When you, our readers, contribute to the financial upkeep of LifeSiteNews.com, as I have said before, you are in your own way joining us in this fight. We work as your proxies and representatives. Few people are free to devote themselves completely to this particular work. Businesses must be run, classes taught, families raised. So when you donate to LifeSiteNews.com, we are, in a sense, working for you, and allowing you to become directly involved from where ever you are.

It is simply a truth that without the support of readers, our work would come to a sudden screeching halt. I have been writing for LSN for nearly 8 years and the forces lined up against us grow more ferocious every year. The Narnia stories instilled in me the desire for noble and romantic battles, to enter in some small way into the titanic struggle of good against evil.

And here I am doing just that, as the Rome Correspondent for LifeSiteNews.

Hilary White
Rome Correspondant
LifeSiteNews.com